Reading & Composition

The ongoing production of Hollywood films set at sea suggests that even in today’s age of mass air travel and instantaneous global communication, we still hunger for a good tale of ocean adventure. What accounts for the lasting resonance of the age-old association of sea travel with adventure and of seamen (and women) with the telling of tall tales? What is the singular relationship between the openness and remoteness of the sea and the unbridling of imagination and suspension of disbelief that make fiction work?